Stories/storytelling for women's empowerment/empowering stories

Abstract

Synopsis The aim of this paper is to introduce and analyze the “Stories/Storytelling for Change” Project by the “I am the Story” Group that was held under the auspices of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Project. The paper describes the methodologies used in holding two re/writing workshops using social and anthropological research as raw material for the writing. Another aim of this methodology paper is to propose that creative writing and storytelling can be effectively used as advocacy tools in gender training workshops. Works of art are maintained to help participants in gender training workshops to acquire gender knowledge and to write gender sensitive stories in the most subtle of ways. The subtlety of a good work of art is claimed to help feminist issues to sink in an effective way as it helps suspend participants' resistance to new ideas about gender stereotyping and traditional gender roles that oppress both men and women in the Egyptian society. One of the main aims of the paper is also to demonstrate how storytelling performances including the stories written in the workshops can help disseminate discussions and revisions of gender issues to wider audiences who would not know about these issues in other different ways.